Surveys are important tools for gaining information about a target audience. By surveying a target audience one may learn preferences, viewpoints, opinions, likes and/or dislikes, and/or other information regarding various subjects, such as products, services, political candidates, etc. For a given survey, the target audience to be invited to participate in the survey may be selected randomly or based on certain characteristics they possess, such as their demographics (age, geographic location, family status, etc.), interests, their use or familiarity with a given subject (e.g., certain products, services, etc.), and/or other characteristics. The members of a target audience who participate in a given survey may be referred to generally herein as “panelists.” In some instances, incentives or rewards are offered to target audience members to encourage their participation in the survey. Surveys generally present questions to members of the target audience (or “panelists”), and the members' responses are recorded for analysis. The members may be logically grouped in various ways, such as based on certain characteristics of the members like gender, age, education level, geographic location, etc. Thus, surveys may enable insight to be gained regarding the views/opinions of the various members of a target audience.
The questions desired to be presented in a survey are often authored or scripted so that a human user and/or computer can then interact with panelists in conducting the survey in accordance with the scripted survey. The script generally is a programmatic description of the questionnaire and each of its elements and their attributes.
As used herein, a “survey definition” is used generally as a term to describe the script of a survey. The survey definition may specify various characteristics of a given survey. For instance, the survey definition generally specifies the set of questions to be asked for a given survey. The survey definition may further specify the types of responses/answers that are available to the panelist, such as whether the panelist is to answer a question as either “yes” or “no,” whether the panelist is to select an answer from a multiple choices that are presented to the panelist, or whether the panelist is to answer the question by ranking a subject along some scale (such as on a scale from 0-10), as examples. The survey definition may further specify a flow (e.g., sometimes referred to as branching or routing), which defines not only questions to be asked but a particular sequence in which the questions are to be asked and/or a particular dependency or hierarchical relationship among the questions and/or the answers. For example, such a flow may specify that if a panelist's response to question 1 is A, then ask question 2; otherwise, ask question 3, etc. The survey definition may specify such characteristics of a given survey as: the question text (e.g., the specific set of questions to be asked for a given survey), response text (e.g., the specific answers that may be presented for selection in response to a question), response code, maximum/minimum responses, question type, fixed position of responses, randomization, rotation of responses, instructions, formatting, language in which the questions/answers are to be presented (e.g., English, French, etc.), and/or alternative language text that is available for presenting the questions/answers, etc.
Various mechanisms have been used for interacting with panelists for conducting surveys. One approach is telephone-based surveys. In employing a telephone-based survey, the survey is often scripted (e.g., in Unix or some other software-based language), as discussed above. In other words, the survey definition may be implemented in a computer-executable software program that executes on a computer with which an operator interacts, whereby the program directs the operator in conducting the survey in accordance with the survey definition. In one implementation of a telephone-based survey, outbound calls are generated (either manually by a human operator or automatically via an automatic dialer) to a target audience, or members of the target audience are somehow prompted (called to action) to call in to a telephone-based survey. Once a call is established between a human operator and the panelist taking the survey (either as a result of the panelist being called by or calling in to the telephone-based survey), the human operator may interact with the panelist to conduct the survey. In conducting the survey, the operator may interact with a computer interface to read questions off the computer screen. The operator may further interact with the computer interface to input the panelist's responses to the computer, and the software executing on the computer may present the questions to be asked by the operator in accordance with the flow defined by the survey definition (e.g., the next question that the software prompts the operator to ask may depend on the panelist's response to one or more previous questions). The responses of the panelist that are input to the computer by the operator are typically stored to a computer-readable data storage medium for later analysis.
Alternatively, instead of a human operator conducting the survey, a telephone-based survey may be implemented in a manner that does not require a human operator to interact with a panelist. For instance, the computer implemented on the researcher/surveyor's side may be implemented to output audio for effectively reading recorded questions to the panelist, and the computer may employ an interactive voice response (“IVR”) system to receive voice or touch-tone (e.g., dual-tone multi-frequency, “DTMF”) signals from the panelist and process the received responses autonomously for conducting the survey. Again, the computer may control the IVR system to conduct the survey in accordance with the survey definition file for the given survey, such as presenting the questions in accordance with a flow specified by the survey definition file. In other words, the survey definition may be implemented in a computer-executable software program that executes on a computer of the telephone-based surveyor, whereby the program directs the IVR system in conducting the survey in accordance with the survey definition. Also, the responses (voice or touch-tone input) received from the panelist may be stored to a computer-readable data storage medium for later analysis.
Another approach for conducting surveys has been through online web-based surveys (or “online panels”). In general, panels are an approach to sampling and maintaining contact lists for research by any channel, and such panels have evolved to be implemented online via web-based surveys. When conducting a web-based survey, panelists access and conduct a survey via the Internet, such as through a particular website. A web server hosts a website that presents a user interface to each panelist's web browser that accesses the website. In some implementations, a survey engine resides on a web server (e.g., within a web page) and uses the survey definition to describe how questions are implemented. The survey engine parses the definition file to generate the content displayed to respondents (e.g., displayed in the respondents' respective web browsers). For example, the survey engine may parse a survey definition file to provide, via a web page accessed by a respondent's web browser, an appropriate user interface for interacting with the respondent (e.g., presenting questions and receiving input from the respondent for answering the questions). Thus, the respondent's web browser displays the parsed content provided by the survey engine in a manner similar to the way an ASP page is parsed to create HTML (with extension “.asp”). Thus, in a traditional web-based survey, each panelist interacts with a user interface via their Internet connection with the hosting web server to input responses to the questions, and those responses are recorded to a computer-readable data storage medium for later analysis.
Various survey engines that may be implemented for the above-described web-based survey implementation are known in the art, such as those commercially available from Confirmit (see e.g., www.confirmit.com), Askia, MI Pro, and Global Park, as examples. Typically, an online survey authoring tool (e.g., authoring software available from a provider, such as Confirmit, Askia, MI Pro, or Global Park, as examples) enables an online survey to be created, delivered to a target audience (e.g., presented online, such as via a website), collect data that is input by panelists taking the survey, and prepare and share detailed analysis of the results. In typical operation of a web survey, for example, the survey authoring tool allows a researcher to interact with the authoring tool (via a computer on which the authoring tool software is executing) to define a survey definition (e.g., a set of questions to be presented, as well as corresponding answer types/choices that are to be presented for each question, etc.). The authoring tool may then generate code for a web page, such as HTML and/or XML code, for conducting the survey as specified by the surveyor's input to the authoring tool. Then, when a panelist accesses the web page, the defined questions and corresponding answer types/choices are presented on the panelist's web browser so that the panelists can interact with the web page to input their responses (e.g., by clicking on the correct answer). For instance, when accessing the web page, a survey engine executing on the hosting web server may parse the survey definition file to present the questions in the web page that is displayed by the panelist's web browser and to collect input data input thereto by the panelist. The web server hosting the web page thus receives and stores the input responses as data in a database, which can be exported.
With the increasing popularity and number of mobile devices having digital data connectivity, there have been a few solutions for surveying panelists via mobile devices, such as mobile telephones, smartphones, laptop or notebook computers, electronic tablets or pads, personal data assistants (“PDAs”), etc. For example, mobile devices have been used to conduct the above-mentioned web surveys, whereby a mobile device is used by a panelist to access a website hosting a survey in the manner discussed above. For instance, mobile surveys have been conducted using wireless application protocol (“WAP”). WAP basically takes the same sort of survey style, layout and approach, and even the same tools as a web survey, and runs it as a web page that is accessible via a mobile device that has Internet connectivity. In operation, a user of a mobile device completes the survey in a browser that is running on the mobile device to access the web-based survey.
In one solution, such as with Confirmit's platform called Flex, Java-based technology may be employed by a web server to read what the client device's (e.g., mobile phone's) browser is, and if the browser is determined to be iPhone or Android or one of the mobile browsers, then a normal HTML-based or ASP.net page is loaded, which presents the survey questions on the user's mobile device. The loaded page receives the user's responses as input, and stores the responses in a database on the web server that is hosting the page.
With the above-mentioned web surveys, including those that are accessed by mobile devices, the panelist's device that is employed for accessing the survey must have a persistent Internet connection while conducting the survey. For instance, when the user moves from one page of the survey to the next, the device must have an Internet connection to be given the next question and to store the answer received for that question. Further, with traditional online web-based survey solutions, a panelist often has to start all over if he/she fails to complete the survey in a single session. For instance, if the Internet connectivity is interrupted or if the user elects to close the survey without completing it, the user often does not have an option of later resuming the survey at the point where he/she left off but instead must start from the beginning of the survey the next time he/she accesses it. This is clearly inconvenient and inefficient for the panelist/respondent, and thus often causes panelists/respondents to drop out of surveys and not complete them.